Down the Drain
by BlueCookiesAreBae
Summary: "She looked like the old Thalia. The old Thalia who ran wild with her little family of three, the little girl who thought she knew already how cruel the world could be." In which Thalia finally lets out all the hate and anger and love for a certain son of Hermes, reminiscing on the past. Failed angst. Thaluke. Canon-verse.


Thalia closed the door behind her, stepping into the clean bathroom. Her dress for the party hung on the door and swung back and forth, glittering. She stepped in front of the mirror above the sink and started scrubbed her dark eye shadow and thick eyeliner off.

The lieutenant reapplied her eyeliner, this time thin, while the hot water still ran in the sink. The steam on the mirror softened the appearance of her scars and eye bags on her reflection, making her look younger than she really was.

She looked like the old Thalia. The old Thalia who ran wild with her little family of three, the little girl who thought she knew already how cruel the world could be.

And all of a sudden, for the first time in many years, Thalia Grace began to cry.

Memories rushed to her head in rhythm with the water rushing from the faucet below. Her head hurt, her eyeliner ran, guttural cries emerged from her throat, and Thalia let all of it out. All of it. All of the emotions bottled up within her broken heart spilled all over the bathroom floor.

The sound of the sink became white noise and Thalia found herself painfully reminiscing on the days of _him_ and _her_. The good old days of old Luke and old Thalia.

A particular memory grips her and sucks her in. The bathroom around her transforms into a little park with a few trees scattered around and birds chirping noisily.

" _Time's up!" young Thalia exclaims, smirking childishly at her partner-in-crime. "How much ya got?"_

" _Three gazillion stars!" Luke braggs with a proud look. "Beat that, Thals!"_

 _She snorts and punches his arm. "Three gazillion isn't a number, idiot."_

" _Says who?" he asks, though his face shows that he knows he's been caught._

" _Says me." Thalia smiles and pauses, then asking, "What's the real number? I got 257 stars."_

 _Luke bites his lip. She had beaten him. "I forgot?"_

" _Really, Luke? Like I'd fall for that." She chases him around the tree, laughing the whole time with him._

She remembered all of that, all the little games they would play. She remembered how she would catch Luke cheating more than once, though she would be lying if she said she hadn't added a few stars to her count as well. Thalia felt deep nostalgia for the days when beating her best friend was her worry. When cheating for a silly game felt like it would be worth it, like it would be a true hell if they lost.

The old Thalia didn't know it was _his_ death that would be the _true_ hell.

The scene changed into a flurry of red and green leaves and another memory started to show. Thalia gripped the granite sink side harder until her knuckles turned white as she was pulled into another painfully sweet memory. Tears still pooled in her eyes, but she could still make out her eleven year old self with the boy who had died with a piece of her soul.

" _I've always wanted to jump in the leaves," admits young Thalia, slightly older than the one from the last memory._

" _Why? What's so great about jumping in dead plant parts?" he asked, picking up a particularly brown leaf and quickly dropping it._

" _It's just that… it's just something all the other kids have done…" She takes a deep breath and turns her electric blue eyes to his pale blue ones. "I know we're different, Luke. I just guess that sometimes I wish we weren't as different as we are."_

 _His eyes clear in understanding. Suddenly, he pulls her up and saunters to a fence that circled around a yard with a huge pile of leaves in the centre. Luke vaults over the very short fence and motions her to follow. "Why don't we give it a shot, then?"_

 _Her eyes lit up with delight as she follows him eagerly. His hand tentatively finds hers, making Thalia blush_ just _a little, and they jump high into the lump of red, brown, orange, and yellow. It explodes around them, sending leaves all over the before-clean yard. The duo laugh, though not before a shrill voice interrupts their fun._

" _Hey! Get off my lawn, you delinquents!" and old lady yells with a rake in her hand, trying in vain to run to them in her crimson heels. The sight is so amusing Thalia almost chokes on a stifled giggle._

 _Luke runs with Thalia not too far behind, and after they are out of the neighborhood they break into a fit of giggles onto the sidewalk._

Thalia loosened her grip on the sink and smiled to herself. She remembered how far he would go to please her. Whether it was trespassing into yards or breaking into a skateboard shop, he would do anything for her. Luke would even go to Mount Olympus and slap Zeus in the face if she had asked him to.

She would have done the same for him too, now that she thinks about it.

That's how much they had loved one another. _Had._ Thalia closed her eyes, thinking about back then, and reached to turn off the water, but another memory engulfed her before her fingers brushed the knob.

" _We need to go book thieving again for Annabeth." Luke emerged from Annabeth's sleeping area in one of their safe houses. "She's done with all of them."_

" _Annie's a complete book nerd, huh?" Thalia responds lazily. "Tonight or tomorrow?"_

" _Tomorrow." He sits next to her, drawing his arm around her._

 _Thalia blushed, and she swears she can see Luke discreetly smiling at her redness. They sit in silence, content with each other._

" _Luke?" she asks after a while in the calming quiet._

" _Yeah?"_

" _What are we gonna do when we grow up?" Thalia inquires. He pulls her closer._

" _We'll be a family with a nice house and a dog. One of those nice dogs that you always wanted-a hound, right? We'll be in a nice neighborhood, walk to school, and Annie will be on her way to getting a scholarship. The house will be nice, with green and black curtains in our rooms and grey ones in Annie's. We'll have barbecues and jump in leaves and play water basketball-whatever we want to do." He says it with so much confidence Thalia was sure he had thought about it before._

" _Yeah, Luke?" Thalia's smile was blinding to all who could see her at that moment._

" _Yeah, Thals." He jolts up in surprise when Thalia pecks his cheek and walks away to go to sleep. Just after Thalia turns her back to him, his face develops into a deep red that was almost purple._

This time, Thalia really _sobbed_ her heart out, crying and crying until her tear ducts could produce no more. She clearly remembered those times where they were in the awkward point of liking each other but _not_ dating. They had thought their crushes were old, silly crushes. But they were wrong. A silly old crush wouldn't have ripped her heart like he had.

Thalia couldn't help but wonder what could have happened had not all the shit occurred. Perhaps Luke would be here, holding her as she cried. Maybe they'd step out of this bathroom hand-in-hand or his arm draped over her shoulders. Maybe she would have gotten her first kiss from him, instead of knowing her lips will never meet another's for her whole life.

But thinking about all of that was the thing that snipped the final thin string trying to keep her heart together. Loud sobs echoed off the tile in the little lavatory, and Thalia was sure that Piper, Annabeth, and Hazel were probably around the corner debating whether to bust the door open or not.

It all became too much. Memories pulled at her head until it was so overwhelming she hit the water knob shut and wiped the steam from the mirror while gasping for air. Blood came from where her knuckles had it the sharp edges of the sink knob, but the pain was nothing compared to the pain of _remembering_. The tears kept coming, even after Thalia had thought they stopped. There were infinite tears when you miss someone you'll never see again. That's something Thalia can confirm from experience.

She turned the faucet on once again to wash her eyeliner off that made her look like her old self in the first place. Thalia stared at the stained water slip down the drain, along with the old Thalia and a hopeless romance that ended before it had truly began.

 **A/N: Hope I didn't totally fail in writing semi-angst! It's my first time attempting angst** _ **and**_ **my third fanfic in general. Please review tips on how to make this** _ **actually angsty.**_ **If you'd like more Thaluke from me, pass me a review too! (** **｡◕‿◕｡** **) I'd love to hear from you!**


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